Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself. ~ Alain De Botton

So this is the third installment of guest blogging. Seeing as it has been a fair while since I last made a guest post there are a number of things upon which I would like to touch.

So as one may imagine much time (and numerous blog posts by Steph) have been focused on the impending arrival of the baby. Along with this, comes the arrival of numerous baby and parenting advice books, that you certainly need to read or there is no chance your baby will survive. Without the baby books, just leave the kid with a pack of wolves, they will have a better chance of survival anyway(this advice does not include one man wolf packs).

I’m here to tell you, while some of the advice is good, all the books I have read to date do not deal with the most critical of changes that occur pre pregnancy: the arrival of the First World Problems. To help illustrate my point two examples are provided below.

Upon a nice quiet evening Steph and I have been lying in bed enjoying a nice educational read (Steph – What to Expect When You are Expecting, Jason – Clifford the Big Red Dog) and subsequently turn the light off to retire for a night of sleep. Shortly after turning the light off I am awakened by the startling sound of “OH MY, OH MY, OH MY!! Immediately I think something is terribly amiss and poop my pants a little bit. Just kidding, I only squeezed out a couple drops of pee. Here is the conversation that ensued:

J: What is wrong?!?! What’s up with all the “OH MYs”??

S: The battery in the remote to my fan is dead, and it won’t turn on.

Hence, the onset of the First World Problems.

The second example is derived from our recent excursion to New York City. We are at Penn Station on the day we are traveling back to DC and all of the sudden Steph is onset with the case of the “OH MYs”. Again, my response is immediately to determine what is the cause of this tremendously serious situation.

J: What’s wrong!?!?

S: I think I lost my candy.

First. World. Problems.

Maybe I should write a book about all these things, which arise during pregnancy that no one tells you about. If anyone has any potential titles please let me know. The current frontrunner is “Why Pregnancy is Actually Much Harder for the Dad than the Mom”. I think it’s catchy.

As highlighted in previous blog posts Steph spent a week in Germany. This lead to much communication using What’s App which allowed us to text without any additional charges. This is great in theory….until you have a disagreement. Then having to text everything is your worst nightmare. Plus, during a disagreement you feel the need to text everything at 4-5x the speed you normally text. So, “I respectfully disagree with your current opinion” turns into something resembling this “I@ re3cet7f70lly dis1e-09gre faj;klfjklvnvmf,vfn”. I believe some of the message gets lost in translation. Interestingly, what I have determined is that I have become somewhat multilingual as at least now I know what the consensus of my opinions are at the end of every disagreement, even in German,  "Ich bin immer falsch". Which I think translates to the fact that I am always wrong.

Oh, also during the trip since I was without supervision I decided to grow a moustache. Lets guess if I currently have a moustache as my supervision is currently back in the US.

I don’t get why the moustache gets such a bad wrap. As I told someone the other day I feel the moustache and bowtie are the Rodney Dangerfield of facial hair and fashion, neither get any respect.

For any sports fans out there, they know that the NFL draft is quickly approaching. This has become an event in itself and what I realized is that picking a name for a baby is much like the NFL draft. Sometimes there is not a consensus number one pick. Other times the number one pick turns out to be a flop. And other times a couple of strong workouts helps to propel a dark horse to the front. There has been an interesting interplay between the actual draft and the name picking. While I know the player is ranked number 7 on Mel Kiper Jr’s big board, the name has had a couple of strong showings and has moved solidly into our top three. Will be interesting to see if Barkevious can make a run to name number one.

Until Next Time,

-Jas